The first time I ever heard of this ‘Happy Holidays’ ‘Merry Christmas’ controversy was last year when Stephen Colbert was making fun of Bill O’Reilly. I’d managed to make it 30 years blissfully unaware of this important controversy.
Upon reflection, though I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone complain to me about “Happy Holidays”, if I did, this is what I’d say: “Well, you realize that ‘holiday’ is a compilation of the words ‘holy day’; therefore, I’m wishing you a happy whatever-is-holy-to-you day!” If I say it with a smile, and they still bitch about it, clearly they have a stick up their ass that only Divine Intervention could remove!
I disagree completely. I think the people who use “Happy Holidays” are doing it to be inclusive. It’s the “Merry Christmas” people who are excluding and marginalizing.
Actually, I am sick of this. And I LIVE with it. My husband looked at me this year and said, “Why do our Christmas cards say ‘merry everything and happy always?’ They should say Merry Christmas and have Jesus on them!”
They say Merry Christmas and Happy Always because I’m a pussy (and an atheist, btw). If someone tells me Merry Christmas, I say it right back. If they say happy Hanukah, hip hip hoorah it’s Kwanzaa, woo hoo for the winter solstice, I sat that right back at them too. Heck, if a gay man tells me a story about his “roommate” when it’s clear they are more than roommates, the next time I see him I say, “Hey! How’s your roommate doing!?” I don’t want to offend anyone and I think we are all entitled to whatever holiday or other disorder we’ve come to hang on to.
If someone gives you some sort of holiday greeting and you get snarky because you’re not happy with THEIR expression, you need another cup of eggnog and a nap. There’s nothing OFFENSIVE about being told happy holidays…your particular beliefs may not be specifically acknowledged, but who cares? It IS a frickin’ holiday! Heck, happy “time off work” to everyone! Woo hoo!
My birthday is Christmas Eve, so even though I’m an atheist, I find a gigantic celebration of the birth of a child to be really nifty. It’s great to have an excuse to give people gifts, put up shiny sparkly things, and blow up the kitchen with fudge. I don’t care what your excuse is, why would anyone care what MINE is? If a Christian minority (and I believe it probably is a pretty small minority) are annoyed because they don’t KNOW that basically ALL of their Christmas traditions have zilch to do with the birth of Jesus, then they can go be annoyed and write their redneck response somewhere else. Just leave me out of it. I’m happy to let you be, so offer me the same respect.
Love the poem. I haven’t gotten any Christmas glurge because everyone knows what my typical response to it is, i.e., to fire back with your edition of the holiday poem or something similar. But if I get it, I plan to do just that. People are being NICE when they tell you happy holidays, they’re not asking for a lecture and a debate on the origins of said holiday.
I liked the poem. It was remarkably agreeable despite having a strong message.
<pantheon inserts long string of Bible quotes about doing violence against those who do not accept it or who happen to believe differently>
Originally Posted by pantheon, to clarify hijack:
My response was to SA’s implied claim that there was no codified violence against non-believers in Christianity, Judaism, or Bhuddism.
:dubious:
Me too, and today I got my chance when Mom sent me the original email. Thanks Valteron!
Context, pantheon. Context.
Damn it!
I want to send out **Valteron’s **most excellent poem, but nobody’s sent me an e-mail giving me a reason to!
Great work.
Happy Winter Solstice!
What more context is necessary? You were blatantly moving the goalposts.
No I wasn’t. The conversation was in regard to the conditions under which Islam outlines the conditions under which war is to be waged against those who do not follow it.
I said no such instruction exists in the other major faiths.
pantheon (I believe it was) then listed a few instances of Biblical quotes regarding violence toward individuals and attempted to pass that off as equivalence. It was there that the attempt to move the goalposts took place.
Further, I did not say there was no codified violence in Christianity, Judaism or Buddhism; I said there was no instruction to wage war on their non-believers.
This all reminds me of the dishonesty so often apparent when liberals decide to take up a cause and pretend that the perfectly obvious isn’t so for fear of resultant bigotry. I’ve seen it with feminists who insisted that there was no difference whatsoever between men and women, even in terms of physical strength and abilty to perform certain jobs (despite the fact that they clearly aren’t up to slinging people over their shoulder and carrying them down firefighter ladders). I’ve seen it regarding race where it was pretended that black people were no different in terms of athletics (for fear of opening the door to claims of inferiority in other ways), etc., etc., ad nauseum.
If there is some falsely negative bigotry being spread about a certain sex, race or religion, IMO, it’s best to confront it directly with statistics and evidence to prove it isn’t so, rather than insisting that everyone turn a blind eye to the perfectly obvious and pretend that it wasn’t so.
The weird thing is that the two people that sent me the original “month before christmas and blah blah blah” email are not very religious in person. One of them is a lapsed Catholic–a really, really lapsed Catholic, who blames all her neuroses on having attended Catholic schools. I don’t think she even read it. The other one is also not a member of any church, does not identify–you know the way some people say they are “a Baptist,” “Methodist,” or whatever–he just says he’s a protestant. I think his sole religious activity is passing these things along. I don’t know if he reads them, either. But he also thinks Obama is a Muslim and Jane Fonda should have been hung for treason.
“Where in Christianity or Bhuddism or Judaism does it outline acceptable terms of doing violence against those who do not accept it or who happen to believe differently?” is what you said. I then quoted several “terms of doing violence against those who do not accept it or who happen to believe differently” from the Bible. These were not just quotes “regarding violence towards individuals”- they were specific instructions from God, to his people, to kill, destroy, stone to death with stones, overthrow, and put to death people who practiced other beliefs.
You then, um, clarified your context as “What I claimed is that there is no codified specificity outlining conditions in which warfare may be conducted by Christians, especially against non-believers.” and then further ‘clarified’ it as “I said there was no instruction to wage war on their non-believers”.
So, where are the goalposts now? Is the scale not big enough? You think the Bible isn’t -fraught- with instructions on destroying whole cities and nations of the “wicked” (translation: those who ‘do not accept or who happen to believe differently’)?!?!
Joshua 8:1-29 LORD gives very specific instructions to Joshua about how to destroy Ai, a city of unbelievers. This is, of course, right after he he finished with Jericho. 12,000 people bite the big one here exactly as God directed. Count as war?
Jeremiah 50:21-24
21Go up against the land of Merathaim, even against it, and against the inhabitants of Pekod: waste and utterly destroy after them, saith the LORD, and do according to all that I have commanded thee.
22A sound of battle is in the land, and of great destruction.
23How is the hammer of the whole earth cut asunder and broken! how is Babylon become a desolation among the nations!
24I have laid a snare for thee, and thou art also taken, O Babylon, and thou wast not aware: thou art found, and also caught, because thou hast striven against the LORD.
Exodus 32:26-27 (3,000 ppl die)
26Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, Who is on the LORD’s side? let him come unto me. And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him.
27And he said unto them, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour.
Numbers 31 (entire, hundred of thousands killed to avenge the childrten of Israel)
7And they warred against the Midianites, as the LORD commanded Moses; and they slew all the males.
Deuteronomy 13:12-15 (if there’s one unbeliever, destroy the whole city to be safe)
12If thou shalt hear say in one of thy cities, which the LORD thy God hath given thee to dwell there, saying,
13Certain men, the children of Belial, are gone out from among you, and have withdrawn the inhabitants of their city, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which ye have not known;
14Then shalt thou enquire, and make search, and ask diligently; and, behold, if it be truth, and the thing certain, that such abomination is wrought among you;
15Thou shalt surely smite the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, destroying it utterly, and all that is therein, and the cattle thereof, with the edge of the sword.
Deuteronomy 20 (destroy whole nations and peoples to prevent them teaching you abominations!)
16But of the cities of these people, which the LORD thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth:
17But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee:
18That they teach you not to do after all their abominations, which they have done unto their gods; so should ye sin against the LORD your God.
I know, I know…angry LORD OT dusty passages, right? No true Christian Scotsman still follows that. 'cuz they’re all down with the NT loving lamb Jeebus. You know- the same one who said "“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest part or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place.” (Matthew 5:17 NAB) and "“…the scripture cannot be broken.” John 10 (35) and “34Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.”
Not to mention, according to his own words, he and God are one. The same God who has killed or ordered killed untold nations, peoples, cities (and occasionally just drowning the entire world…). You want to talk larger context? Weren’t you trying to contrast how Islam is not a religion of peace? The terrorist who flew those planes into the WTC were as exemplary of Islam as the Christians who beat gays to death and bomb abortion clinics in America. Zealots and evil people wear the cloaks of all religions, the flags of all nations, and the fifties are over.